The Washington Post - USA (2020-08-02)

C4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 , 2020

BY MADELINE ROTHFIELD

F

our cans of black spray paint abandoned in the woods. That’s all it took to completely reshape my identity. W hat marvelous possibilities might have been contained in those cans? Maybe they would have been used by a Banksy-like vigilante for social commentary; maybe they would have been used to touch up a community park bench. Instead, they were used for spreading hate. You can read about my high school, Glenelg, in The Post: In the middle of the night in spring 2018, four senior boys graffitied the school with swastikas, the letters “KKK” and slurs about Black, gay and Jewish people. This hate crime reshaped my identity as a Jewish woman by exposing me to anti-Semitism and reinforcing my advocacy for a future of cultural freedom. I learned a lesson that seems to resonate more and more each day as protesters all over the country take to the streets for equality: Don’t wait for hate to come to you to stand against it. As a kid, I never thought twice about my multidenominational upbringing. My mom was raised in the Southern Baptist church, and my dad is Jewish. I knew that Mom loved Christmas and that the season began the day after Thanksgiving. With Dad, we would light a menorah and eat chocolate gelt. I understood that other families in my community didn’t celebrate Hanukkah, but that never seemed significant to me. I never felt different as a kid. But high school taught me that being different makes you a target. In my sophomore year, a boy I’d known for years threw a penny across the room and yelled to a fellow Jewish classmate, “Pick it up. You’re a Jew, right?” The boy laughed and complied, but when our gazes met, his eyes weren’t laughing. Anti-Semitic jokes and insults were frequently directed at me and the 30 other Jewish kids at my school of a thousand. I reasoned to myself that, in a rural area like Glenelg, maybe these kids hadn’t been raised to under-

stand diversity. All that pent-up prejudice came to a tipping point in the spring of 2018. Black paint coated the school with a thick layer of hate. When I arrived at school that day, I was confused by the heavy police presence. Soon, im- ages of the defacement plastered social media, and students start- ed calling their parents to come pick them up. I thought it was commonly understood that the swastika rep- resents the slaughter of millions of my people and others under a regime that defined them as sub- human. My Polish ancestors died in Auschwitz, so I knew better than most people the implica- tions of that symbol. For the first time, I felt scared for my life because of my identity. It had never occurred to me that I could be hated simply for being. I knew that racists and neo-Nazis existed, but that was in some far-off world that existed only online. That day, that world knocked on my front door. What I learned that day is that I cannot afford to hide my identity. What we permit, we promote. If bigots are not challenged when they scorn the religion and eth- nicity of others, their abhorrent agenda will continue. I need to be proud of who I am. That means no more laughing at the jokes deliv- ered at my expense, no more shying f rom conversations about identity and no more hiding. By not standing up for myself, I am agreeing tacitly that it is okay to demean those who are different. When I went home that day, I turned on the news. That’s when I noticed it. One of the swastikas was painted backward. They had inadvertently (and ironically) painted a Buddhist symbol of good fortune and well-being. That black spray paint had acci- dentally created something beau- tiful. Instead of being a stain on my community and dagger into the soul of its people, in my eyes, the symbol was transformed into a hope for a better future if we all take a stand against hate.

The writer, a recent graduate of Glenelg High School in Howard County, will be a freshman at Wake Forest University this fall.

An act of hate a t my high

school helped me grow

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BY PETER GALUSZKA

A

fter years of struggle, the Rev. Paul Wilson, a Bap- tist pastor and funeral home director who lives near the historically African American community of Union Hill in rural Buckingham County, could not believe the news on July 5. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, an $8 billion natural gas project led by Richmond-based Dominion Energy, had planned a noisy natural gas compressor on 68 acres of land at Union Hill. Pipeline partners had decided to give up. “ ‘Happy’ is not the proper word. I was more than elated,” said Wilson, whose efforts against the project meant 20 to 30 hours of work each week. Now that the 600-mile-long pipeline is dead, killed by rising costs and unresolved questions about its market, plenty of Vir- ginians are scratching their heads wondering how the con- troversial project, announced in 2014, got so far and lasted so long. They are putting together a list of what to change so it doesn’t happen again. What transpired was an en- during marriage of interests. En- vironmentalists opposed the project’s degradation of air and

water and its contribution to global warming. Homeowners, including those at the affluent Wintergreen ski and golf retreat in Nelson County, fought expen- sive legal battles after Dominion and its partners, including North Carolina’s Duke Energy and Georgia’s Southern Company, sued for eminent domain rights to their land. Residents of Union Hill, settled by formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, were bewildered that their cherished, quiet community could morph into a heavy industry site. One target is the Federal Ener- gy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which approved the pipeline. Greg Buppert, a lawyer with the Charlottesville-based South- ern Environmental Law Center, which led the legal fight, notes that FERC does not consider whether an entity seeking its approval is in the public interest or has a real market for its products. FERC requires a contract showing that the energy such projects provides has a buyer. In the Atlantic Coast Pipeline case, there was such a contract, but it was between Dominion and Duke and their own subsidiaries. “This needs to be resolved,” Bup- pert said. FERC and other regulators

likewise consider projects with a sense of tunnel vision. They de- liberately do not consider similar projects or the need for them in the same area at the same time. As the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was under FERC consideration, another natural gas project, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, was being planned in another part of Virginia. “There is no holistic approach,” Buppert said. Survey rights and eminent domain are also big issues, said Joseph T. Waldo, a Norfolk law-

yer and property rights expert. Early in the Atlantic Coast Pipe- line project, Dominion sent letters to property owners asking for permission to survey their land. If the owners declined, Do- minion sued. It was able to do so because former state Sen. Frank Wagner, a Virginia Beach Repub- lican who had accepted dona- tions from Dominion, had suc- cessfully moved to change state law so that utilities could get access to private land. “That

needs to be changed,” Waldo said. And, all the groups say, the fix seems to be in with state regulators. In 2018, after two members of the Air Pollution Control Board questioned the project, Gov. Ralph Northam (D) had them replaced. The opponents did effect some changes. Chad Oba, a mental health specialist in Union Hill who co-founded the Friends of Buckingham activist group, said FERC had been able to proceed with a project’s approval despite

outstanding permits, but no more. Her efforts show just how hard organizing grass-roots activism can be. She said that one August day in 2014, a friend in neighbor- ing Nelson County called her and asked about the compressor plant idea. She had not heard of it, but Dominion had scheduled a public meeting about it that very same night. “We got a stand set up outside,” she said. But organizers faced consider- able problems, such as the lack of broadband, computer illiteracy and the age and health of area residents. Eventually, such stubborn work paid off. Project officials are trying to find a way out. Domin- ion Energy spokesman Aaron Ruby said in an email that it is trying to resolve about 80 con- demnation lawsuits and make good on promises to restore dis- turbed land. At Union Hill, hard feelings linger with some residents who wanted to settle with the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Wilson said he resisted because it was the right thing to do. “A sweet voice from heaven told me we would win. I didn’t know it would take six years,” he said.

Peter Galuszka is a freelance writer in Chesterfield, Va.

The lasting impact of a successful fight against a pipeline

NORM SHAFER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST The route of the now-canceled Atlantic Coast Pipeline would have crossed the Appalachian Trail near the Blue Ridge Parkway at Reeds Gap.

WILL NEWTON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Glenelg High School in Glenelg.

icon other than the Justice De- partment building. He lost his life for this country. Because of its glorious past, and now with majority owner Daniel Snyder finally acquiescing to a name change, many think a new National Football League stadium should replace our beloved RFK. Some things are priceless, including the memories made there. I have mine. We all have them. But sometimes you really can’t — or shouldn’t — go home. And the Washington football team should not come home to RFK Stadium. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and others in Congress declared that the Washington professional football team would not be allowed to move to D.C. unless the owners changed the team’s name. The new name has yet to be announced.

BY SKIP STROBEL

S

tatues are coming down and names are being changed around the country. At Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, the monolith- ic statue of George Preston Mar- shall, founder of the Washington professional football team and a segregationist, was removed from the main gate area of the stadium and put into storage. The statue of Washington Senators owner Clark Calvin Griffith (another monolith), who oversaw an unofficial policy of segregation at Griffith Stadium, awaits its fate at the same location. A s you face the stadium, Mar- shall was on the right and Griffith is still on the left. Sandwiched between these two bigoted-book- mark statues, is a third statue. Well, it’s actually a bust, sitting atop a slender pedestal, with the humble inscription: Robert Fran- cis Kennedy 1925-1968. That name has been there since 1969, when the stadium formerly known as the District of Columbia Stadium was renamed by the federal government, to honor the late attorney general, senator from New York and humanitarian. The bust and pedestal have been there since June 7, 1969, when the stadium was formally dedicated. It has always bothered me, a 69-year-old n ative Washingto- nian, that a football stadium was the best the federal government could come up with to pay tribute to this great American and global

When the time comes to fully reimagine this mammoth chunk of concrete (already destined for demolition by the end of 2021) with its expansive parking lots, we can do better than a football stadium. D.C. residents and Events D.C. have been working on alternatives for years, through community meetings, to make this 190-acre site a vibrant destination that serves all of D.C. and visitors to the nation’s capital. Kennedy was first a dreamer. He was fond of reciting a line that he attributed to George Bernard Shaw: “ Some men see things as they are and say, why?; I dream things that never were and say, why not?” Though he was born into a family of wealth and fame, he managed to connect, in a very personal way, with the common man and with those in our country and around the world who needed a helping hand. His travels to see the plight of Americans in Appala- chia, Mississippi, Bedford-Stuyve- sant and other places show his empathy. He was good friends with César Chávez, breaking bread with him once to end a fast. Service to country is a Kennedy family mantra. Bobby Kennedy served in the Navy and federal government, was an elected senator and a presidential candidate. He was an outspoken defender of equal justice and equality for all people. His metamorphosis after the assassination of his brother, Presi- dent John F. Kennedy, showed a man of compassion who struggled

with how to welcome changes that would better all of mankind. The Kennedy family’s love for the sea is well known. Robert Ken- nedy was concerned about popu- lation growth and environmental pollution, knowing that advanced technology could be good only if it benefited everyone and was moni- tored closely. (We could learn this lesson today.) Kennedy was a man before his time and yet of his time. Sadly, many of the issues from his time are still with us today. I would like to see a more fitting memorial to this man who gave so much. Something other than a football stadium, something that reflects who he was and what he stood for. Something we all can appreciate and enjoy. Mixed-income and affordable housing, multipurpose playing fields (already completed), retail space for a grocery store and other shops, parkland along the Anacos- tia River, a research center for Kennedy and other amenities that can be used all year long are some of the ideas put forth by D.C. residents for the site. I will be in the streets of D.C., with my own fliers, posters and buttons, trying to convince D.C. residents and D.C. government officials that much more can be done with this land that is so important to this part of town and the city as a whole than another football stadium.

The writer is a longtime Washingtonian.

Robert Kennedy deserves better

than just another football stadium

JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST RFK Stadium in D.C.

JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST A bust of Robert F. Kennedy at RFK Stadium in D.C.

The Washington Post - USA (2020-08-02)

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